[still life with flowers]

Article description

Watercolor on vellum, probably painted around 1700, attributed to Johanna Helena Herolt Graff (Frankfurt 1668 -1723 Surinam). Johanna Helena was the oldest daughter of Maria Sybilla Merian, she was married to the painter Johann Andreas Graff in Amsterdam. Maria Sybilla Merian had two daughters. The elder one of them, Johanna Helena married in Amsterdam the merchant Jacob Hendrik Herolt with whom she moved to Paramaribo, the capital of Surinam in South America. Johanna Helena Herolt, born as Graff, the older daughter of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), created numerous lavishly crafted gouaches. In doing so she has recombined individual motifs from existing drawings, among them are watercolours of flowers, flower bouquets and some of plants in combination with images of snakes or spiders. She was particularly well-versed in the drawing of flowering plants, and therefore worked like her mother for the collector Agnes Block and on behalf of the botanical garden ,Hortus Medicus' in Amsterdam. After Maria Sibylla Merian traveled to Surinam with her younger daughter Dorothea Maria (1678-1743) in the years 1699-1701 to draw plants and insects, Johanna Helena moved with her husband, the Amsterdam merchant Jakob Hendrick Herolt, in 1711 also there. In 1723 she passed away probably in Surinam.